


where I can come alive

by cosmya



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Femdom, Handcuffs, Loneliness, Porn with Feelings, Seduction, The Vault (Doctor Who)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:20:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27760651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmya/pseuds/cosmya
Summary: We have bodies, too. So many of them. Our bodies are so much of what we are.It gets lonely in the vault, so Missy has to use her imagination sometimes. She’s become rather good at it. Imagination is memory’s answer to the corruption of time, the erosion of absence. The Doctor can learn a thing or two from her about that. And experience is the best teacher.
Relationships: Twelfth Doctor/Missy
Comments: 5
Kudos: 14





	where I can come alive

It’s cold when the Doctor returns to the vault. The cold of my hibernation; it mitigates my need to count the days.

“I fucked up, Missy.” He’s leaning into the door before it’s shut all the way, and stumbles a little when it slams. 

I’ve been sitting in one of the chairs, contemplating nothing in particular. It hasn’t  _ actually  _ been long for me since he last left, but it might’ve been a hundred years for him. How kind of him to come back so soon - to not make me wait. I’m sure that’s  _ exactly _ what he was thinking of when he returned to  _ this _ moment and not next year. Folding my hands, I smile at him. “Funny, I thought you did that all the time.”

The sarcasm slices whatever he was holding together open. He comes to me, places his hand on the back of the chair, looks down at me. Wheezes a little. I don’t know where he’s been; I’m not going to ask. If it had been good, he would have brought dinner.

His voice is quiet. “Maybe so, but I… I can’t keep going on like this. These endless chances with no repercussions. On  _ me _ , I mean. All of these people I can’t save. Something has changed, Missy; something has short-circuited. I’m not feeling it the way I used to. I’m not feeling each death as my own anymore. I am just… moving on. When are all of those memories going to catch up with me?”

“When you stand still.” My head droops back. There’s a spark in his eyes, shaded as they are, staring maybe into mine, or maybe into nothingness, or maybe he thinks those are the same. Looking at him is always a bit like stargazing, but now more so than ever. Stargazing isn’t always peaceful. Everyone always makes it sound peaceful. Sometimes, it’s the most violent thing. And it’s clear that the Doctor’s poor little feelings are nearing their critical mass. “You  _ know _ that. Else I wouldn’t be in here, would I? So, you need something. Something that only I can give you; how nice of you to make me feel special. I’m guessing that you’ve seen how good captivity has been for me, and now you want some of your own.”

He doesn’t answer, but takes me by the upper arm, gently, practically  _ asking _ me to resist, over to the flimsy bronze bed. He doesn’t throw me down on it. Hurting me isn’t what he’s after. It’s a bit annoying, though. Barging in here and demanding I fix him up when I have  _ so _ many other things I could be doing.

He rifles in the bedside drawer. I know what he keeps in there. Haven’t seen them in a while, though.

I hold out my wrists for the handcuffs. We are at the bed, after all. Maybe he is here to fuck me. Is fucking me suddenly punishment for him? I know he’s been avoiding it, but really? Has he forgotten how much fun we used to have?

Or maybe… maybe he hasn’t been avoiding it, but saving it.

He sees my outstretched wrists and gives me that look. Then, he hands me two sets of cuffs. “They’re not for you.”

My head drifts to the side as I consider what he must be asking for. “Hm. That’s a bit of a let-down. Well, make yourself comfortable, then.”

He sits down on the bed, fully clothed. The wanker doesn’t even take his shoes off. Calmly, I cuff both his wrists to the bronze bars.

“What are you going to do to me?” he asks, a hidden excitement in his voice. The  _ expectation _ of it. Like I’ve been plotting this out for ages, my chance to finally give him what he deserves.

I put a finger to my chin, making a show of thinking. Then, I smile and go to sit on the bottom edge of the bed. Looking down, I unknot my necktie and toss it on the floor. My shirt buttons pop open one by one, down to the waistband of my skirt. The fabric gapes open, but just a little. That’s enough. Enough to make it hurt.

I clear my throat. “D’you have cameras in here, Doctor?”

“No,” he answers, his voice even and normal again, “I have one outside, pointed at the door.”

“Well, then, do you think about what I do in here when you’re trotting off on adventures? What I do when I’m all alone?” I reach up and unknot my hair, shaking it out like a mane. The bed creaks as he shifts his weight. I don’t give him enough time to answer. “When you’re with Bill, in the Tardis or out there saving people or whatever, do you ever just take a moment to think of Missy? How cold… how bored… how  _ lonely _ she must be?”

I place a hand on my brow to show how forlorn the thought makes me. And then I smile to myself, a little raw thing, pretending like I don’t want him to see it.

“Well, I’ll have you know that I think about you sometimes.” Finally, I bless him with a glance. His lips are parted and there’s a hard look in his eye. “Not all the time, mind you. You’re not as interesting as you think you are. Eventually, though, I run out of other things to think about, and there’s nothing good on the telly, so I always end up circling back around to thinking about you. It’s become something of a baseline for me. There’s a room in the metaphorical home of myself that you live in, and even when you aren’t in it, the echo of you is. So it’s inevitable that everything I feel - every wicked little impulse, every moment of desire - eventually coincides with my thoughts of you. And sometimes, when I’m thinking of you, my body decides it’s missing something, and my hand accidentally slips in the downward direction. Down, and down, and down.”

I place my hand in the crease of my hip, not close enough to be demonstrable, but close enough for him to better complete the picture in his imagination.

“And sometimes, it just rests there. It’s a homey feeling, you know? One half of me can be sitting idly, reading a book, and the other half starts thinking about you, and your weird old face, and my hand that isn’t holding the book finds its way down there. Well, first, it goes ‘round back to unzip my skirt, but you get the idea.”

It’s all guarded silence. What, did he expect me to put on saxophone music?

“Then, the book gets less and less interesting, and my fingers get restless. I put it down, and wriggle my skirt off, because I’m not feeling cold anymore, but actually quite warm. Odd how the slightest thought can change our physiology in an instant, isn’t it?”

I stop watching him and look back at the door. My hand drifts closer towards the center of my lap.

“At this point my eyes are usually closed. The scene inside my head is much more interesting than this musty old place. My cunt is so warm, and I would rather live there, where I can think of you and feel myself respond to it. Feel the memories become real, because what they do to me isn’t imaginary. But there’s some part of me that can’t forget that they aren’t real. I need more convincing. I feel suddenly empty, and the need to fill the void comes over me. Luckily, my fingers have a solution for that. One of them finds its way… inside.”

He’s looking down, now. Averting his eyes. He’s disillusioned himself with vulgarity, thinking he doesn’t deserve it.

“And then I think… well, what would happen if the Doctor came in and saw me like this? Reaching inside myself, breath catching, voice making little sounds it isn’t supposed to?”

I raise my eyebrows at him inquisitively, but he’s still not looking. Even if my daydream isn’t affecting him, it is affecting me. I’m starting to feel the very thing I’m describing. How good a storyteller I am.

“This Doctor, maybe he’d come in, that stern look on his face, find me all vulnerable and pink and dripping, and tell me I’m being bad. He couldn’t know what I’m thinking about. He’d rip my fingers away.” I pause. “But then, because this is all in my head and I’m not beholden to evidence and reality and the like, instead of getting angry and leaving and cursing me as a whore, he’d take them to his mouth and suck them dry.”

I’m staring at him now unashamedly. At his face. I daren’t look any lower.

“He’d quietly tell me to carry on. And I smirk at him, and reach back downwards, and stick it back inside. It’s easier, now, because his mouth’s been all over them. So I can push further in, as far as I can go, and then back out a little, and curl it up towards where he stands above me, and coax out more of those impolite little sounds. The Doctor seems to really like those.”

The real Doctor, the one handcuffed to the bed I sleep in at night, finally shows a sign of life, swallowing hard. “Does he.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Oh, you don’t believe me? You think I’ve got my characterization wrong?”

“I’m not implying that.”

“Do you need a demonstration? No, no, I’m not even finished yet. Excuse the pun.”

I wait for him to say, “you’re excused”.

I clear my throat. “Carrying on, then. My fingers are busy, but they’re starting to get a little lonely. So my other hand travels down to join them. Now, just to be a good sport, the first one slips back outside of me and smears the wetness around my cunt, sharing it, and then resumes. You  _ especially _ like the way I gasp when I push  _ two  _ of my fingers back inside this time. Then the other hand gets to work circling around, slow at first, and then faster, so that my fingers are all in time; my body is the drum.”

“And what’s this Doctor doing, then?” His voice has become very low and rough. I uncross my legs and cross them the other way so that he can’t see my hand slip between them and wait, just wait.

“Oh, well, he’s just watching. I think he’s wishing he can replace my wetness with his wetness. And I’ve no reason to be cross with him… he’s been so forgiving, you see… so I let him. My legs part, and he kneels on the ground in front of me like I’m his god. And when he proceeds with his worship, it’s even better than what I was doing, but deep down - and this is the naughty part, you’ve been warned - I just want him to stop for a moment and extricate himself from between my legs and kiss me with that soaked face.”

Finally, his eyes flick up to mine. They’re clearer than I’ve seen them lately. “Do you ask him to?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I never get that far.”

He can’t bite back a smirk. “Are you going to this time?”

I stand and shake out my hair, brushing my skirt. He looks like I’ve just taken his candy away. The vault feels much warmer than it did when he entered; all the buzzing atoms it contains are excited to see what I do next. I saunter around the bed as slowly as I can manage, then lean down towards him, stopping just short enough to where he can’t reach me. “He’s abdicated that choice.”

I lean down to kiss him, and instantly I’m a poet, because it’s like it was the first time we kissed with both of us in these bodies, like he’s so surprised that I still want him and so resistant to admit that he wants me back. It’s only for a moment. But it’s enough time for my hearts to skip two beats, an inverse of what pounded constantly in my head back when I used to be in that place. In that last body; the coiled one. Denying that I  _ wanted _ . Denying to myself what I knew was true: that the Doctor and I were always meant for each other. That we are the only ones who can  _ survive _ each other.

When the moment passes and he kisses me back, he’s telling me he’s changed, too. Only it didn’t take so much as a regeneration to break his denial. He was always the quicker and the stronger of us.

I suck on his lip and the bed squeaks. I think his hands must be scrabbling for me, grasping at the empty air. Wanting to embrace me. To accept this for what it is: an eternal entwinement beyond our warring minds.

Because we have bodies, too. So many of them. Our bodies are so much of what we are.

My lips leave his, but I don’t pull away. I exhale into his mouth so that he knows I’m breathing hard. And when he knows the extent of my affectedness, I lean back and see something I haven’t yet on this face. ‘Need’ is a soft, vulnerable look on him.

“Don’t,” he begs.

I steel myself and sit on the side of the bed. He can see down my shirt. His eyes catch the flash of lacey black underneath; he’s cursing me for giving him so little. “You asked me for punishment, Doctor.”

“And you’ve meted it out.”

My look of surprise is half-genuine. “I finally give you a story in return for all those you tell me, and you consider that ample punishment? You think you deserve a reward?” My tone isn’t harsh, but eerily gentle. I reach over to stroke just above his knee as gently as I can. I feel him tremble.

His eyes are down in apparent shame but I can see the pupils moving slightly, following the movement of my hand on his leg. “Is that what this is? What this would be?”

“What are you asking me, Doctor?” I sharpen my voice again, because he’s made me angry, the idiot, and he looks up at me in response. “If anything - anything more - that happens between us right now would be only for you? If it all means nothing to me either way? If I derive no pleasure from your happiness, only your suffering?”

I peer into his eyes with an intensity that should cower him. But he doesn’t look away.

My laugh comes out somewhere between derisive and sad. “No. The answer is no.”

His sigh comes out shaky. “You’re merciful.”

“I’m  _ not _ merciful,” I snap. “Never say that. Did you misunderstand me? It’s not all about  _ you  _ in here, is it? I have feelings, too! And desires! I’m  _ not _ trying to prove that  _ you _ love  _ me _ .”

It occurs to me, making my breath catch once more, that I am no longer in opposition to the word  _ love  _ itself. In fact, the idea of reclaiming the word is becoming more and more enticing. Why shouldn’t my definition take precedence?

I will make it so. Promising myself that, I soldier on. “We both already know that is true. Rather, I am trying to prove to you that  _ I _ love  _ you _ . That I am capable of that, wretched though I am. That, through this, you have shown me that I am not merely a weapon of destruction.”

None of this is news to him, considering the serenity on his face, and that makes me want to cry. “So this is gratitude?”

“Oh, why must you try to simplify everything?”

I’m tired of talking. I pull my legs up onto the bed, crawling over to where he still sits, slightly slumped, and climb over him, keeping space between our bodies even as my skirt hangs heavily on him. He looks relieved. This Doctor is so touch-averse compared to the last one I knew. This is advantageous; I think he finds touch more meaningful than he used to. All the better for me to communicate what he can’t seem to accept in my words.

I kneel over his lap and run a hand through his hair, gently at first, then pull it back harder so he’s looking up at me. “Yes, Doctor. It’s gratitude. And it’s a lot more than that. I’ll leave you to figure it out.”

The cuffs scrape against the bronze bars as he pulls himself up to kiss me again, unbidden this time, like he’s finally caught a whiff of understanding. In kissing him back, I can’t hide the candor of  _ wanting  _ this. Wanting to play with him like I used to, to show him that I can be good and that he can be bad. 

That when we do this, we’re really the same. There’s no morality in our love. We meet not on neutral ground, but in the dark. 

Our mouths can’t seem to stay apart for long, but with difficulty I let go of his hair and his neck, struggling to pull my shirt off without breaking this contact that I so need. I feel the shortest pulse of sound escape his throat; it’s loud enough to echo around this barren vault and come back to us drenched in my essence that permeates this place. 

I pull my skirt up around me and sit down, feeling the hard anomaly below me. Sitting still feels like death; I ebb back and forth over him, feeling the fabrics separating us pill and complain as they rub against each other. Slowly, savoring it, I reach down and undo his belt, wishing he could help me or at least touch me while I fumble away. 

“Oh, bloody hell,” I mumble, and I pull away to reach over and retrieve the key from the bedside table. I unlock his right hand, wondering whether this counts as mercy.

As soon as he’s half-free, it’s like I’ve offered food to a starving man; he takes first my neck, pulling me back to kiss him quickly, then grasps at my chest, then reaches around to fumble at my bra clasp. I have to help him, because honestly, when d’you think the last time he did  _ that _ was? I slide it off, and that bastard  _ bites _ me before running his tongue over my nipple and sucking, because try as he might to prove himself otherwise, his violence is instinctual and his kindness must be earned. It’s a double pleasure, then, the pleasure of the sharp forgiven pain coupled with the pleasure of being right.

His free hand has now found its way down, just as mine always does, but stops only briefly before tracing around my hips to clutch at my arse and pull me upwards. I grasp the top of the headboard and do what he’s asking, but not before pulling the rest of my clothes off because what use are the damned things anyway if they keep him from seeing me better. No longer must I fight off the cold.

I’m close enough to feel his breath on my cunt. I don’t give myself to his mouth without pausing first, though. Pausing to make sure we both understand.

“Will you ask me to?” he requests.

I can’t hold back the tide of my smile. “Please,” I goad him. It’s not begging, or pleading, and it’s certainly not pathetic. It’s peacemaking.

He pushes me into him and proves to me that I had his characterization right all along. It’s a lot of suction and the rolling of tongue around my clit, like he’s still hung up on my last body and isn’t quite used to these different parts yet. He’s out of practice, but I don’t care, because it’s not about what he does, it’s about the idea of him doing it, the surrender, the  _ you win _ . And I’m adrift, I’m blind, I’ve lost all my senses except for that which he’s overwhelming. He’s a quick learner. It’s not difficult when you want it this badly. When he dips his tongue inside me, I know I own him.

And I know it hasn’t been long, and he’s probably going to be mad at me for taking myself away from him so quickly, but I have to do some proving, too. I sit back down and kiss his cheek, finding the furthest my wetness has traversed his face, then kiss in and in until I’ve met his mouth again. I’ve gotten so used to the taste of myself, but in him it’s mutated into something foreign and unique and intoxicating. 

I lean away and take a deep breath. He deserves a little generosity. 

He brushes my hair off my cheekbones. “Memory served me well,” he murmurs.

“That was always your strength.”

“Memory, imagination… at some point, we had to meet in the middle.”

I move out of the way to let him finish taking his clothes off, or at least do the best job he can with one arm chained to a bed and a sopping wet bitch distracting him, while I explore my cunt like it’s new to me. I let my eyes close, focusing. The spit coating me is somehow more viscous than my own, slower, older, from a place deeper than I can manage myself. I rub it around, then stop when I feel how close I am. I’m not ready. And I mostly say that because he’s not ready.

He swallows loudly. He’s been watching. I’m not being very nice, keeping this all to myself. 

Am I supposed to be nice, though? Does he even  _ want _ me to be nice?

Either way, I’ll tell myself this: that by fucking him, I’m implicating him in the pleasure of a criminal, and therefore balancing our fragile dichotomy of right and wrong. That place of darkness where we meet. I’d get up and draw all the curtains and plunge us into shadow, but I want to give him a memory to think of when he’s away.

I smirk lazily at him, and his face sets in stony concentration. Then, slow as cold honey, he takes my soaked hand, and just as I told him to, he sucks my fingers clean. I pull them away so I can do him a kindness, wrapping them around his cock before rubbing the tip over my clit, then I let go and lean forward and take his neck gently, so gently, and kiss him. It’s sad, really - I can’t control myself, can’t keep myself from wanting it soft and innocent and cloying, and sure, we’ll call it compassionate. What can I say? We all have our shames. Wouldn’t this, of all things, be mine?

As long as it eternally stays between the Doctor and I alone, in touches and in glances and  _ never  _ in words, I can indulge. So I bury my head in his neck and press down upon him and rub myself along the shaft, back and forth and back and forth, making my folds envelop him without letting him push inside. He’s breathing harder than I am, and I hear, once more, the scrape of the cuff restraining his left arm on the bedpost. At least he has one free hand to place at the small of my back, not to push me faster and faster, but to feel my pace and make it known that right now, I am  _ his _ captor, and my word is gospel.

I think he can respect that I take my time. But, just as it always does, there comes a point where the emptiness of my soul (melodramatic, I know) matches the emptiness of my cunt, and I need him to fill them both. I arch my back and position his cock at the entry of myself, feeling how swollen and tight I am inside from all this ridiculous foreplay without penetration. 

He lets go of me, but only for a moment, to take my cheek and extricate me from the safety of his neck. I won’t escape his gaze. For another moment, I let him feel the tranquility of hibernation. 

And then I’m pushing him in. I move as slowly as I can, but no time can soothe the magnitude of his power; I’m fractured from the inside out. And all of those gaping rifts are justly filled with something that I suppose I have to call love.

When I’m finally filled, I stop, because I can’t bear the idea of its impending absence. We wait here. We just… wait.

In that time, I think I can feel the rifts drawing back together, healing themselves. When they’re whole enough again to be the ones expressing their pressure upon the Doctor, he moves his hips just enough - just enough to back out a little, to say  _ I understand _ , that I feel ready to break my fractures once more.

Slowly, still, but more surely, I inch up and down over his cock, my lungs working harder with each incursion, turning my mere gasps into whimpers into moans into begged  _ “Doctor” _ s, and I won’t even try to hold myself together, it’s been time enough. I let go of his hair and reach down to play patterns over my clit, ending this as it always begins.

It’s a patient one. Less of an eruption, or an explosion, or a Big Bang. It blinds me in its quietness, forcing my eyes shut, forcing me to imagine things I haven’t seen since I got stuck in this vault and probably won’t see again for a very long time. The tide coming in over a beach nobody knows about but you and him, a field of wildflowers at the first spring bloom, a storm finally abandoning its seed over a mountaintop. It’s all pretty things. Secrets. Whispers. 

His is second. Mine causes it, probably; not insofar as he was waiting for it, but like knowing,  _ feeling _ , what I must be feeling pushes him over the edge. He’s quiet about it too, if you must know. But I feel how he shakes. And now he is the one hiding his face in my chest.

It’s over. The aftershock has always been particularly strong for me. Unable to be the one holding him together, I’m reeling and collapsing onto my back next to him. It’s a moment of grace. I stare up into the expanse of boring ceiling, then tilt my head back further, and see his arm still hanging limply from the handcuff. I reach up and trail my finger along it, and he trembles.

“Mistress,” he breathes, like he needs all those extra letters to spell out his delirium.

“Doctor.”

That’s all there is until the rate of my hearts pumping joyful blood returns to somewhere around normal. The emptiness hasn’t crept back in yet.

“We’re not going to speak of this,” he says.

I chuckle. “No. Of course not.” I hope he doesn’t think I’m being sarcastic. I’m not. 

He turns his head to look at me, but I keep staring skywards. “But... if I were to fuck up again and have to come back for more… would you be able to tell me a new story?” He says this like he can’t wait for the next time.

“I could probably think of one. But,” I say before I can stop myself, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but don’t… don’t think you have to do something horrible to get this outcome. You said it was punishment. Maybe it’s better served as reward.”

He doesn’t answer, and for that I’m eternally grateful. He doesn’t make me clarify what criteria I might have to warrant a reward. Good, because I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t have those words in his ears. 

It’s fine if he’s thinking them. I can’t control that. 

With a spring in my step, I roll off the bed and take the second key, unlocking the handcuff still holding him to it. He smiles at me sheepishly and attempts to clean himself up. One nice thing about Time Lords is that it’s impossible to tell whose bodily fluids are whose. Makes it a bit easier for the Doctor to explain. “Have Nardole do the laundry, will you?”

The Doctor snorts, rubbing his newly-freed hand. “He’s going to hate me, you know.”

“Oh, good. The more the merrier. Tell him that it’s all your fault. You were just being so  _ flirtatious _ and  _ sexy _ and I just couldn’t keep my hands off you.”

“I’d rather not get vomit all over my boots.” He doesn’t even claim he’ll lie to Nardole and say he had no hand in this.

“Suit yourself.”

He makes to leave, and I lay back down on the bed, the soaked sheets like catnip to me. I don’t know where he’s going, and I’m not going to ask. We were never the cigarettes-in-bed, cuddling, falling asleep on each other, waking up at 4am for round two, sort of people. I love watching him go, actually. I love knowing that he’ll come back.

He turns one last time at the door. He merely nods once, as if unsure to suggest that he will return.

“One thing, Doctor. Just one. Think of me,” is all I say.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> this is most likely going to turn into a series of different combinations of doctor/master... lmk if there's a specific one you'd like to see next >:)


End file.
